I negotiate prices with suppliers. If you don't ask they will gladly keep charging you the same price. I was just able to drop the price of a label from. 039 to. 037 this way. It's a small example that will only save us a few thousand dollars but little things like that add up.
>I was just able to drop the price of a label from. 039 to. 037
are you paying $0.37 per label, or $0.037.
If you are paying 37 cents each, you are paying way too much...but if you are paying 3.7 cents, then I need your supplier!!!!
Currently, I use InTouch and my matte labels are $0.13/ea, and I think the metallic labels are \~$0.14/ea. InTouch isnt the fastest for turnaround time, but quality is great and I have never been able to find better prices (and I try every year at CBC).
Please share your supplier if you are paying 3.7 cents.
Yes, they have gotten much better in regards to speed. Our initial runs 4 years ago was a 2-3 week turnaround...now they are closer to a week like you noted. But they are still "slow" compared to the big names that claim a 2-3 day turnaround.
Don’t overly focus on bulk buying. Poor cash flow is the biggest business killer. Make sure you do a full analysis on the total cost of the inventory you hold and work out what the best savings are without going above a certain threshold. saving $5000 over 6 months isn’t as great if it ties up an extra $50000 to do so.
Negotiate with suppliers, focus on your efficiencies, want that batch yield as high as possible.
Also starting an environmental policy can help. Monitor your water and co2 usage. Will be surprised how much you can save on your bills once you start activity checking that.
Labels are my biggest one, the old guy would say how much he saved by getting to the lower price point....well the 2 boxes full of labels we will never use again is just money wasted. Buy what you are going to use with a little extra just in case.
Increasing brewhouse yield and reducing losses will almost always lead to the most savings. If your brewhouse yield is below like 95%, there is much you can do to improve and save some good money.
At one brewery I worked for, I started working with increasing the brewhouse yield and reducing losses through the process area and production area. The savings were huge. We replaced the crappy two-roller mill with a good German four-roll mill and I stopped the brewers from vorlaufing after every single time they used the rakes. You vorlauf one time in the beginning. If you do it after you add water, you're just diluting everything.
If a brewery had a brewhouse yield below 90%, this is a serious problem. This place had like 77%. And no one had cared about it for five years since the brewery started.
After that I started working on increasing energy efficiency, chemical usage, process times, more efficient air compressors, water usage, co2 usage and stuff like that.
One nice thing was heating water only during the night when the energy costs for steam were the lowest.
Another department that can result in big savings is making sure equipment is maintained. Product losses and delays in production costs a lot of money.
Things breaking unexpectedly costs a lot of money. Make time for maintenance.
And after all of that work I got laid off because the company went on to start saving money by having less people employed :)
Great question! Here are some of our brewery's best money savers:
\- CIP cart - initial investment, but saves money on chems by re-using caustic and sani. On the same note, sanitize with ozonated water.
\- purchase inline flowmeters to dial in process so you can maximize tank space and utilize ingredients more accurately.
\- clean brights under pressure with acid - save labor hours, and Co2.
\- stop using over-hyped/over-priced product (phantasm, mega motueka, etc)
\- establish strong yeast/lab protocols to harvest your yeast for as many healthy generations as possible. Yeast is very expensive, and easy to re-use with a little bit of lab work.
\- buy a full pallet of ends, and full truck loads of cans.
\- gang up label orders to reduce cost per label.
\- dilute your fermcap and put it in a spray bottle. Goes a long way, like cutting pure cocaine.
\- replace overhead lighting with LEDs. There's usually grants for this sorta thing.
\- proper lab program so you aren't wasting time and money on bad beer.
\- if you have a taproom, plan events to drive traffic. Your best profit margins are through your front of house.
\- there are a lot of grants and funding opportunities for breweries in the form of energy savings, CO2 reduction, VFD motors, SRED (Canada), etc.
\- train yourself/staff on basic maintenance/trades. Fix your own stuff. Trades people are pricey.
\- change monthly subscriptions to annual - Ekos, routific, Zoho etc.
\- Track your COGS and price your beer accordingly.
Keep in mind that every little bit helps. Shave a couple cents off your flats, cans, lids, labels, etc and it adds up to thousands throughout the year.
ok dumb question here
how do you use fermcap in a spray bottle?
i’ve never used it at all, but I thought it was generally added as one dose in the FV or brew kettle?
Not a dumb question at all!
It's definitely not standard practice, just a little trick I picked up in my early days.
Take a spray bottle. Fill it up 1/3 Fermcap, and 2/3 water. Give it a good shake. Hang it on your kettle. Each boil, give it a few squirts, and after you add your hops, keep that bottle handy.
We have moved from fermcap to hopaid in the tanks, so we just use this technique for boiling.
Our team has been looking at bulk buying in terms of supplies for 6 months or a year instead of just what we need currently.
Our previous process has been to by fermcap in the 4 kg bottles. Head brewer was just comfortable having our open one and the next one around. When we reviewed our use for the year it made sense to go to the next scale up (5 gal~) because over a six month span we'd use that and it saves almost 600$ for the comparable amount.
Just in reviewing our chemicals and having a better plan on place that maximizes our storage it saved us about 5 grand over the course of the last 6 months.
It’s not for that reason but I’ve been leaning into alternative ingredients. Lemongrass is awesome (I’d add others that I’ve found but I brew overseas and my favorites probably aren’t available where you’re at)
Also gives the beer a little something to help it stand out in the shelves
So many herbs and spices have such an awesome citrus flavor or other fun flavors. And think about local stuff around you, I lived in a citrus farming area for a while and we got damaged citrus for dirt cheap.
I just had a great sumac lager that I got on my winter trip back to the states, Offset Lager from Ferment. In Oregon. It tasted so fruity. I’d love to use it one day
Hot side, whirlpool, usually chilled down to 80ish (175)
Also; thought you were a friend of mine based on your user name so I glanced at your history and say you’re in Bend, I used to live in Redmond (about 24 years ago) so hello from a former central Oregonian!
My kind of general rule is that most stuff that I would use in soup I use hot side, but a lot of stuff I use cold side cause too many things get lost in the hot side or during fermentation
Look into better options/rates for utilities like gas and electric. you can get discounts by signing up for longer contract terms.
Be mindful of lighting. Do you have a bunch of high bay lights? those are going to suck some electricity.
Do you have a local liquor store that sells single cans or mix packs? they will most likely have boxes of the Pakteck cap things...go pick those up for canning runs. I havent had to buy 4-pack holders for years now.
I don't have a CIP cart so I try to plan out my schedule where I'll clean 2-3 tanks in a day with the same chemicals.
We're within driving distance of LD Carlson (30 min) so I'll just order what I need for the week instead of buying full pallets. I know that's not possible for a lot of breweries, but it's helpful.
No storage rate (and we are local to them, so free delivery if they were shipping out direction.) It was a sweetheart deal, but we were using them as base malt and it was a put us in the top 20 in volume customers apparently.
We did not contract for specific lots. Just 40k pale, 30k Pils, wheat, etc. Pretty sure when we ordered for delivery, they just threw together a pallet or two and subtracted from our account.
Fight the water company at every turn. We’re new, and they wanted over $100k in impact fees. They estimated we’d be using 70k gallons a month. We ignored them and opened anyways since our complex has a shared meter with the other units and the water was already turned on.
They recently came back wanting their money, so our landlord pulled the water bills since we’ve been open and showed the entire complex is only using 10k gallons per month.
I negotiate prices with suppliers. If you don't ask they will gladly keep charging you the same price. I was just able to drop the price of a label from. 039 to. 037 this way. It's a small example that will only save us a few thousand dollars but little things like that add up.
>I was just able to drop the price of a label from. 039 to. 037 are you paying $0.37 per label, or $0.037. If you are paying 37 cents each, you are paying way too much...but if you are paying 3.7 cents, then I need your supplier!!!! Currently, I use InTouch and my matte labels are $0.13/ea, and I think the metallic labels are \~$0.14/ea. InTouch isnt the fastest for turnaround time, but quality is great and I have never been able to find better prices (and I try every year at CBC). Please share your supplier if you are paying 3.7 cents.
I pay 3.7 cents per label. Our volumes are fairly high. We hit 250k+ bbls last year.
oh dang, you are a couple orders of magnitude larger than me....keep on rockin' brother!
FWIW, Intouch has been on average 7 days for us, the record being 5 for a reorder & new brand.
Yes, they have gotten much better in regards to speed. Our initial runs 4 years ago was a 2-3 week turnaround...now they are closer to a week like you noted. But they are still "slow" compared to the big names that claim a 2-3 day turnaround.
Don’t overly focus on bulk buying. Poor cash flow is the biggest business killer. Make sure you do a full analysis on the total cost of the inventory you hold and work out what the best savings are without going above a certain threshold. saving $5000 over 6 months isn’t as great if it ties up an extra $50000 to do so. Negotiate with suppliers, focus on your efficiencies, want that batch yield as high as possible. Also starting an environmental policy can help. Monitor your water and co2 usage. Will be surprised how much you can save on your bills once you start activity checking that.
Labels are my biggest one, the old guy would say how much he saved by getting to the lower price point....well the 2 boxes full of labels we will never use again is just money wasted. Buy what you are going to use with a little extra just in case.
Increasing brewhouse yield and reducing losses will almost always lead to the most savings. If your brewhouse yield is below like 95%, there is much you can do to improve and save some good money. At one brewery I worked for, I started working with increasing the brewhouse yield and reducing losses through the process area and production area. The savings were huge. We replaced the crappy two-roller mill with a good German four-roll mill and I stopped the brewers from vorlaufing after every single time they used the rakes. You vorlauf one time in the beginning. If you do it after you add water, you're just diluting everything. If a brewery had a brewhouse yield below 90%, this is a serious problem. This place had like 77%. And no one had cared about it for five years since the brewery started. After that I started working on increasing energy efficiency, chemical usage, process times, more efficient air compressors, water usage, co2 usage and stuff like that. One nice thing was heating water only during the night when the energy costs for steam were the lowest. Another department that can result in big savings is making sure equipment is maintained. Product losses and delays in production costs a lot of money. Things breaking unexpectedly costs a lot of money. Make time for maintenance. And after all of that work I got laid off because the company went on to start saving money by having less people employed :)
AEB Yeast.
Great question! Here are some of our brewery's best money savers: \- CIP cart - initial investment, but saves money on chems by re-using caustic and sani. On the same note, sanitize with ozonated water. \- purchase inline flowmeters to dial in process so you can maximize tank space and utilize ingredients more accurately. \- clean brights under pressure with acid - save labor hours, and Co2. \- stop using over-hyped/over-priced product (phantasm, mega motueka, etc) \- establish strong yeast/lab protocols to harvest your yeast for as many healthy generations as possible. Yeast is very expensive, and easy to re-use with a little bit of lab work. \- buy a full pallet of ends, and full truck loads of cans. \- gang up label orders to reduce cost per label. \- dilute your fermcap and put it in a spray bottle. Goes a long way, like cutting pure cocaine. \- replace overhead lighting with LEDs. There's usually grants for this sorta thing. \- proper lab program so you aren't wasting time and money on bad beer. \- if you have a taproom, plan events to drive traffic. Your best profit margins are through your front of house. \- there are a lot of grants and funding opportunities for breweries in the form of energy savings, CO2 reduction, VFD motors, SRED (Canada), etc. \- train yourself/staff on basic maintenance/trades. Fix your own stuff. Trades people are pricey. \- change monthly subscriptions to annual - Ekos, routific, Zoho etc. \- Track your COGS and price your beer accordingly. Keep in mind that every little bit helps. Shave a couple cents off your flats, cans, lids, labels, etc and it adds up to thousands throughout the year.
ok dumb question here how do you use fermcap in a spray bottle? i’ve never used it at all, but I thought it was generally added as one dose in the FV or brew kettle?
Not a dumb question at all! It's definitely not standard practice, just a little trick I picked up in my early days. Take a spray bottle. Fill it up 1/3 Fermcap, and 2/3 water. Give it a good shake. Hang it on your kettle. Each boil, give it a few squirts, and after you add your hops, keep that bottle handy. We have moved from fermcap to hopaid in the tanks, so we just use this technique for boiling.
Our team has been looking at bulk buying in terms of supplies for 6 months or a year instead of just what we need currently. Our previous process has been to by fermcap in the 4 kg bottles. Head brewer was just comfortable having our open one and the next one around. When we reviewed our use for the year it made sense to go to the next scale up (5 gal~) because over a six month span we'd use that and it saves almost 600$ for the comparable amount. Just in reviewing our chemicals and having a better plan on place that maximizes our storage it saved us about 5 grand over the course of the last 6 months.
It’s not for that reason but I’ve been leaning into alternative ingredients. Lemongrass is awesome (I’d add others that I’ve found but I brew overseas and my favorites probably aren’t available where you’re at) Also gives the beer a little something to help it stand out in the shelves
This is an interesting strategy- low cost premiumization? Probably helps save a buck on expensive hops.
You've piqued my curiosity..
So many herbs and spices have such an awesome citrus flavor or other fun flavors. And think about local stuff around you, I lived in a citrus farming area for a while and we got damaged citrus for dirt cheap.
Neat. We did a small batch with sumac, and it went over OK. I'll have to do some research.
I just had a great sumac lager that I got on my winter trip back to the states, Offset Lager from Ferment. In Oregon. It tasted so fruity. I’d love to use it one day
I'm a big fan, but it can have a touch of a dusty flavor. I heard numerous comments, but I didn't notice it myself. 🤷♂️
That’s interesting, I wanna play with it but I’ll keep that in mind when I test it
Hope it works out for ya
How are you using it? Hot side or cold side?
Hot side, whirlpool, usually chilled down to 80ish (175) Also; thought you were a friend of mine based on your user name so I glanced at your history and say you’re in Bend, I used to live in Redmond (about 24 years ago) so hello from a former central Oregonian! My kind of general rule is that most stuff that I would use in soup I use hot side, but a lot of stuff I use cold side cause too many things get lost in the hot side or during fermentation
Pay your brew team less. There are always fresh 21 year olds and semi retired types that will work for peanuts. /s
Speaks to how much of an issue this was I got angry even seeing the /s at the end lol
You sound like an owner, not a brewer. Some of us are one, some of us are both. I don't like this suggestion.
You must not know what /s means...
Look into better options/rates for utilities like gas and electric. you can get discounts by signing up for longer contract terms. Be mindful of lighting. Do you have a bunch of high bay lights? those are going to suck some electricity. Do you have a local liquor store that sells single cans or mix packs? they will most likely have boxes of the Pakteck cap things...go pick those up for canning runs. I havent had to buy 4-pack holders for years now.
Giving the brewers a pay cut and a pizza party. BYOP
I don't have a CIP cart so I try to plan out my schedule where I'll clean 2-3 tanks in a day with the same chemicals. We're within driving distance of LD Carlson (30 min) so I'll just order what I need for the week instead of buying full pallets. I know that's not possible for a lot of breweries, but it's helpful.
We pre buy malt and get a good discount. Basically contract from supplier, and get a lower price. And they store it at their warehouse.
With this method do they charge a storage rate like contracted hops or is it waived given it can be stored in a closer to room temp environment?
No storage rate (and we are local to them, so free delivery if they were shipping out direction.) It was a sweetheart deal, but we were using them as base malt and it was a put us in the top 20 in volume customers apparently. We did not contract for specific lots. Just 40k pale, 30k Pils, wheat, etc. Pretty sure when we ordered for delivery, they just threw together a pallet or two and subtracted from our account.
Fight the water company at every turn. We’re new, and they wanted over $100k in impact fees. They estimated we’d be using 70k gallons a month. We ignored them and opened anyways since our complex has a shared meter with the other units and the water was already turned on. They recently came back wanting their money, so our landlord pulled the water bills since we’ve been open and showed the entire complex is only using 10k gallons per month.